coming-of-age

Neither of us fit in, so instead we fit together.

Mom let go of us and leaned back so she could look us both in the eye. __o more spending the night in the tree fort, you two.

Or maybe they weren__ changing. Maybe they were just now becoming what they had always wanted to be.

The river moves, but it follows a path. When it tires of one journey, it rubs through some rock to forge a new way. Hard work, but that's its nature.

It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things.

What had those vile creatures unleashed in me? What beast had they awakened? I think I vowed to kill the beast and bury it so deep in the abyss it would never again rear its ugly head. Part of me did make this promise. The other part embraced an unfolding of life__ inextinguishable flames and the mind__ unspoken bondage.As far as reinforcing the strength of my mind__ resolve, I supposed my body was a useless entity. Rather, it was this fancy thing I lived in__ mausoleum that beckoned the living, promising gratification, refuge, solace, peace, even immortality. It wasn__ me. It wasn__ mine. I realized then, it had never belonged to me. I could control what happened to it only if people were merciful. Watching Valentin was not merciful. It was a torturous joy.

It's funny, the roles we play, the way we have to give up the old ones before we have room for the new ones. The first-first love stuff never goes away in here" she said, pointing to her head. "It makes you who you are. But in here," putting her hand on her chest, "time lets that grow and change. You'll see

You go and do what you need to do, June," she says to me. "You go and find what you need. Your supper will be here, when you need it. Your supper will be warm. No matter where I am, that will be your home," she says.And I can't believe it, watching her. That look on her face. It is all the love that I didn't have growing up, making a face.

The gods lie. They lie because it's the best they can do. We reach out for their lies and we keep on living.

Everyone's always scared for someone else's generation

Me? I had no dreams. No longings. Dreams only set you up for disappointment. Plus, you had to have a life to have dreams of a better life.

I just want to always be here. In this place. Right here, right now.

Flora went to the cinema every day that week. She saw the same movie each day, and wore the same dress.

Do you know what dead skin looks like when they take off a cast?That was my life, all that dead skin. It was strange to feel like the Ari I used to be. Except that wasn__ totally true. The Ari I used to be didn__ exist anymore. And the Ari I was becoming? He didn__ exist yet.

Answer me one thing,_ she says in a rigidly controlled voice. __o you love Logan?__erhaps I should lie, but in that moment, after what I__e just witnessed, I__ incapable of expressing anything but the truth of what__ in my heart. __ith all my heart,_ I sob.

She had been waiting for someone to notice her, like, really notice her. She felt that that was the key, that she would go from the duck to the swan the minute someone recognized her potential. And they would look into her like they were trying to pierce her eyes with theirs, like they were trying to make her heart stop, and the whole world would become background noise and she would take her first breath after all of these years of nothing but existing. It would be like a coronation, or a star exploding, and then she would be born. She would be alive, and she would be loved.

Almost everyone first realized they were becoming a grown woman when some dude did something nasty to them. ...It was mostly men yelling shit from cars. Are they a patrol sent out to let girls know they've crossed into puberty? If so, it's working.

All I can think about is how I wanted to share those firsts with Logan and how I never knew it was an impossibility because it had already been taken away from me.